John Boehner confident he'll win a new term as House speaker

Sometimes the job is a headache he could live without, but John Boehner says he’ll run for another term as House speaker and is confident he’ll win it after the 2014 elections.

“It won’t even be close,” Boehner told his hometown Cincinnati Enquirer in an interview Monday. “I frankly think I’m in better shape with my own caucus than I have been any time in the last three years. …I think they understand me better.”

The speaker dismissed speculation that he’s going to step aside from Congress and give up the House’s top leadership job, which was fueled partly because Boehner and his wife recently purchased a condo in Florida. The vacation home “has nothing to do with my future,” Boehner said.

There’s no question that Boehner sometimes has had difficulty with his restive GOP caucus — especially some of the newer members elected with Tea Party support in 2010 who helped Republicans win the House majority

“I need this job like a hole in my head,” Boehner told The Wall Street Journalearly last year after a dozen Republicans declined to back his second term as speaker and he battled with his fellow Republicans on a deal to avoid going over the “fiscal cliff.”

Boehner got props from his GOP troops after he stuck with them in last fall’s government shutdown, going ahead with a legislative strategy that saw some Republicans try to defund President Obama’s health care law even as federal workers were furloughed.

But Boehner infuriated some of the Tea Party-backed conservative groups late last year when he criticized the Senate Conservatives Fund, Heritage Action, FreedomWorks and others as having “lost all credibility” for coming out against a two-year budget deal that averted another shutdown.